


you will not take my heart alive

by littleleotas



Category: Black Sails
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, as close to 'hurt/comfort' as these two can get, as much fluff as i could wrench from this situation with mine own bare hands, by 'hot' i mean 'sad', hot times in nassau
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:30:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22282192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleleotas/pseuds/littleleotas
Summary: In the early Nassau days, Miranda refuses to let misery swallow herself and James whole.
Relationships: Miranda Barlow/Captain Flint | James McGraw, Miranda Barlow/Captain Flint | James McGraw/Thomas Hamilton
Comments: 6
Kudos: 11
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	you will not take my heart alive

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Who Shot AR (akerwis)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/akerwis/gifts).

> I loved your request for some happier times in Nassau for these two! They sure do want to be miserable, though. I hope this sparks joy, anyhow ❤️
> 
> Title is from the Joanna Newsom song of the same name.

Miranda had long since learned that her happiness was the best revenge on those who wished her ill. Every laugh that fell from her lips was an arrow piercing the hearts of those who did her wrong. Every twinkle in her eye was a bonfire made of the crackling bones of those who caused her pain. It was killing with mirth, rather than kindness, but it amounted to the same thing. She could not be destroyed if she continued to find joy, even in the fading embers of the ruins of her life.

She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear as she poked the fire in the hearth with a stick. Her once-soft hands were calloused, and dirt stuck underneath her fingernails that no amount of scrubbing could dislodge. The warmth given off by the small fire was nothing compared to the roaring flames of the great halls of Europe, but Nassau was warmer to begin with, so it wasn’t as necessary.

Still, the chill crept in. Even on the warmest nights, she would drift into reminiscing and find herself covered in gooseflesh. Sometimes the act of being happy out of spite was exhausting. It was a weapon she carried, and it grew heavier the longer she held it up. She had been acting since they left England. She worried she had forgotten how to simply be herself, or worse, that the person she was now could never regain true happiness, and would have to learn to fake it forever.

She got so melancholy in James’s absence. She thrived on the presence of other people, of debate and conversation, drink and dance—oh, she missed dancing. Being left to the company of her own thoughts was unbearable.

With a heavy sigh, she flounced into a chair and wrapped her shawl tighter around her shoulders. The room grew dark around her as she stared at the table. Another thing she had learned was to focus on the present. She had forgotten this lesson, a little bit on purpose; she did not want to be grateful for what she had instead of moping about what she had lost. She liked moping. It was so comparatively easy to be crushed beneath the weight of grief rather than push the rubble off her head and find the sunlight once again.

It was nearly too dark to see the candles, and she knew she would need to light them before she lost the ability to see her own hands in front of her face. She pushed herself to her feet and began to make the rounds, illuminating the house.

The door opened while she was in the back. She didn’t turn around or cut her work short; she knew who came in without knocking.

When she returned to the kitchen, James was standing by the fire, leaning against the wall with his forehead against his arm. He smelled of salt and smoke, with the faint hint of decay that a sea breeze always carried.

“Hello,” she said. He didn’t turn around.

She went about preparing dinner as if he were not there. This was due in part to the fact that she never quite knew what to say to him anymore. She didn’t want to ask about his time away; she didn’t want to know, for the most part. She didn’t want to talk about the past, even though it was always on her mind. But it was also partially because cooking took all her concentration, having never been a strong suit of hers. She had managed to pull together a weak broth with some of the less-puny vegetables from the garden, and it was sufficient to say it was not a complete disaster, which was not always a given with her efforts in the kitchen.

He turned from the fire at the sound of a bowl being set down on the table. His gaze did not move from the bowl as he sat down and began eating.

Miranda set her own bowl down and sat down, but did not pick up her spoon. She reached her hand across the table.

James paused, his spoon frozen in mid-air as he glanced at her hand. Their eyes locked.

“Miranda.”

All he said was her name, but the words underlying it were plain. He had created Flint, this ghost of a man, out of misery and wished to remain in that state of un-being; he could not acknowledge her or any part of this world in which she lived if he was going to be a vengeful crusader powered by nothing but pain.

Miranda was tired of wallowing.

“James, I am miserable, too, but it is unbearable to be like this all of the time,” she said with a weary sigh. She did nothing to attempt to stop the tears forming in her eyes, allowing them to fall in hot trails down her cheeks. “We were miserable yesterday and we can be miserable again tomorrow but please, put it down for tonight and be here with me.”

He put down his spoon. He neither moved nor spoke for a moment. “It is,” he said, almost too quietly to hear, “disrespectful to his memory—”

“It is disrespectful to _me_, me as I am, right now, to treat me as if I am dead, too,” she spat.

He looked up at her. Through her own blurry vision she could see tears clouding his sea-coloured eyes. It was so difficult sometimes to see him as the monster both he himself and Flint had been made out to be. He took her hand, brushing his thumb over her knuckles. His hands had never been smooth, but the blisters and calluses were more pronounced now.

“What would he want us to do?” James stated, thinking aloud more than asking a genuine question.

Miranda wiped the tears from her eyes and answered him anyway. “He would want you to dance with me.”

He looked at her blankly for a moment and laughed in surprise. “I can’t say that’s the answer I expected.”

“But I’m not wrong.” The corner of her mouth lifted in a smile. Her muscles ached with the disused movement.

“He did always like to watch us dance,” James said with a slight groan as he stood. He was covered in grime and salt, and his seafaring outfit was far removed from anything she’d seen him in in England, but she could almost see James McGraw rather than James Flint standing in front of her and offering her his hand.

She straightened her back, flattening her palm against her stomach before taking his hand. They walked several paces away from the table. If she didn’t listen too closely, she could imagine that the clunk of her shoes on the floor sounded like elegant heels on marble and that the weight of her apron was silk, not cotton.

He bowed like a little toy soldier, so perfectly genteel. As she curtsied in return, she wondered briefly what his crew would think of him if they saw him as she knew him, standing straight and tall, without the casual grim hunch he carried now.

The stretch in her spine as she stepped into hold felt so comfortable, like slipping into an old favourite garment. When they first arrived in Nassau, she thought at least she might be more comfortable without the trappings of London society; instead, she found she missed the discomfort to which she was accustomed. She had not realised until finding herself without it that the corsets and heavy, stiff dresses felt like armour. In their absence she felt naked.

She liked to be in charge, and her partners liked to let her be. Dancing was her one exception. It was a pleasant change to not have to decide anything, but merely follow the steps. She could see why the state of being held its allure.

“I always knew we’d find a dancer,” she said, resting her chin on James’s shoulder as she moved closer. It was not proper procedure, but they had no one for whom to be on show here.

James hummed inquisitively.

She continued. “I would not have been given such a love of dancing and a partner with two left feet. It would be unspeakably unfair.”

James chuckled, surely reminiscing, as she was, on the last time they’d seen Thomas attempt to dance with Miranda. His face quickly grew distant. “Life isn’t fair.”

She leaned back, tracing his cheekbone with her finger. “Not all the time,” she agreed softly. “But sometimes it is.”

The gentle unison of their movements chased away the melancholy. Miranda smiled to herself as she rested her cheek on James’s shoulder. She did not feel joy the way she once did, perhaps, but she was growing rather fond of this new manner of joy. It was a vicious joy, one that was dented under grasp marks snatched from the smug jaws of defeat. After everything that had been taken from Miranda and James, they were alive, they had each other, and they danced. The size of the joy did not matter, nor did the accompanying misery need to be factored in. That joy existed for them at all was a victory.


End file.
